"It's Not Your Job to Feed the Five Thousand"

A Visit by Dallas Jenkins

By Luke Pennington

Dallas Jenkins is the creator, director, and co-writer of The Chosen, a successful multi-season series centered around the life of Christ. The series follows Jesus and his disciples and season one is the top crowd-funded TV series of all time.

On February 28th, 2022, students of SAGU's College of Music and Communication Arts received an invitation to join in a unique experience – a visit from Dallas Jenkins, director of The Chosen. He is a Christian creator, and this was a perfect opportunity to learn from someone on a similar career path, so I enthusiastically accepted this invitation, along with many others. So, on March 2nd, a handful of SAGU students and staff shuffled into the Hagee Center's auditorium. The small crowd held their breath in excitement and listened as he delivered a message that connected best with the college-aged students in the crowd but whose principles are relevant for everyone. It was about trusting God with your future and focusing on walking in His will above all else. A lesson he learned through years of hard experience but imparted freely in a matter of minutes. Below are a series of excerpts from his message and a brief segment from the Q&A session held at the end of his visit.

He shared his journey from his early career to where he is now. After years of doing short testimony videos for his church, he was finally offered the opportunity to make a movie in Hollywood.

“I made it and I spent 10 years in Hollywood, I had done very well in a couple of movies that had success on a small scale, others that weren’t. But everything was independent and outside the system… My goal had always been to ‘arrive’ and always really wanted to be taken seriously and all that, but that was my motivation. I wanted to be affirmed by really successful people. And, you know, my ultimate dream, I'd love to show up on the box offices someday, I'd love to win an Academy Award.”

He went on to explain the commercial failure of one of his best projected movies, and what happened in the disappointment that followed. He felt like his twenty years in his career had been building up to this, so when it bombed, it was devastating. But in this, God still showed up.

During this disappointment, Dallas and his wife were prompted to open the Gospels and read the story of Jesus and the disciples feeding the 5,000. And it was in this that God delivered a message so powerful and relevant to anyone serving the Lord. The message is best put in Jenkins’ own words.

"That moment, my life changed because, number one, I knew God was present and part of it. That he had, in fact, been involved all along and had something to teach me, it wasn't about being hungry or how to be more successful. It was about getting to the place where I genuinely didn't care about the results as long as at that moment where I brought loaves and fish to God and he deemed them worthy of acceptance, that I was okay with the transaction being over at that point. That's a really, really hard place to get to. Especially hard when you're in college and life is ahead of you. And you're being asked repeatedly, 'What are you going to do with your life?' And you're thinking constantly, this is what I want to do. These are the classes that I'm taking to get me to that next stage. And where do you want to be in five years? Where are you going to be in five years? And the answer is, honestly, that's none of my business…

The fact is, it's not your job to feed the 5,000, it's only to provide the loaves and the fish. This means you are built to spend your time making sure that those loaves of fish –whatever it is that you are called to do. Whatever it is that you are contributing, that they're as good and healthy as can be so that if God chooses to accept that and chooses to multiply that –or not – that it can be healthy and good. And that’s what is so cool about the story, and about the truth.

Sometimes we think, 'Well, goodness, I've got to measure my impact by the number of people led to Christ, the number of people whose lives have been changed, because of what I'm doing.' It's very easy to forget that that's not necessarily our job. Our job is to share. That relationship between someone you're trying to impact and God is between them and God. But also, God doesn't actually abdicate our responsibility to do several things. Jesus could have just waved his hand and we could have seen loaves and fishes miraculously appear in the lap of everyone there just like I'm standing in front of you now. But he still demands of them, 'Go find food' and [the disciples] were concerned because there were so many. But he said, 'The many part, I got handled.' But they had to find the food and distribute it. He had them do everything that they didn't need him for until the only thing left was the thing that only He could do.

If there's anything that I'm just desperate to share with you and anyone I have the opportunity to share with – it is that truth. And I want that to be plastered on your brain. It's not my job to feed the 5,000. It's only to provide the loaves and fish. That applies to so many parts of your life. If you could learn that now, you wouldn't have to wait until you're in your 40s and you can save yourself a lot of pain and a lot of struggle, a lot of confusion.

What you need to say to yourself is this: My job in this moment, my task and my ministry is to make sure that what I'm bringing to God is as good and healthy as it can be. Not to abdicate that responsibility. So, while I'm here in college, I'm going to grasp and take hold of anything that I can in order to learn everything that I can. And whenever I have an opportunity to make something or do something or say something, it's going to be as Godly, and as good, and as high quality and as professional as it can be. But at that point, once I deliver to the Lord in whatever way I can – to my professor, or to my boss or whatever it is, the results are actually not mine anymore. That transaction is over.

And just like when I was at that church and those couple years of those testimony videos that I was doing that I decided 'Okay I'm going to put my all into them.' ultimately ended up making not only be better but those videos actually ended up having tons of impact in that place. It wasn't huge, it wasn't Hollywood, it wasn't national. But people's lives were impacted by that. So, in that moment I decided, 'Okay, I give it up, God. It's not going to be my job anymore. I just want to be in your will. And if that means I never make another movie, that's fine.' And being genuinely okay with that concept of not trying to seek results or a level of success."

After he spoke, I was privileged to ask a question in his Q&A session.

L: I feel like the message you gave today is particularly relevant to college students. Is there anything else you would like to add along those lines?

"There's not a lot I can add to what I said earlier, but I can say this. The principle of 'Where you're at in five years is none of your business, is the same principle as 'It's not your job to feed the 5,000. It's your job to provide the loaves and fish.' It's that concept of slowing down your path so that you are taking each step in God's will and in obedience to him. When you speed up, you tend to miss things because now you are going at your own pace as opposed to God's pace. And God's timing is different from ours. So, I would say, instead of getting on the five-year plan, get on the one-week plan. That doesn't mean you completely lose strategy, but it means that the decisions that I'm making are based in what is going to make what I'm doing better. Not more successful.

There's a difference between doing something that is right before God and doing something that's good and doing something that's successful. Sometimes the good and the righteous and the quality are successful. Other times, by what the world deems successful, they're not. You cannot be thinking about that. If you do, you're going to be crippled."

Reflecting on these words brings to mind the crucial point of life that me and many others are at. Certain messages hit harder at certain points in the listener’s life. To me – a senior in college with prospects and plans but no guarantees – Jenkins made one thing clear. His journey to what he would call “success by the world’s standards” was not a straight line. It involved some detours and obedience to God, just like the disciples when they faced the task of feeding the 5,000. But your focus ultimately shouldn’t be on success. It should be on obedience to the task God has given you.